Gift From The Galaxy
by skywalker05
Summary: Stars fade, allegiances fade, one small village in the Dathomiri jungle will fade. Names remain. Missing moments from the Nightsisters trilogy.
1. Heritage: Darth Maul

**1. Thirty-one years before the Battle of Yavin.

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**

The Nightsister's pale skin was flushed with pink soft enough to tear through, red flayed muscle that could, with _one more move one more strike one more _Force-brought accident , cascade blood across her cheek and let him be finished with this fight, this problem in the way of his task—Boot-soles tripping against metal grid, not rattling the catwalk.

Darth Maul pressed forward into Black Sun's stronghold. Darth Sidious wanted the criminal organization wiped out, not because they were criminal but because they were an organization. There were only going to be two organizations in the coming political struggle: the Trade Federation and the Republic. And the Sith, not an organization but organized into two who would watch, wait, manipulate-and fight-

They needed to be the only powers who would last.

So Darth Maul had fought through Alexi Garyn's stronghold, destroying his vigos and growing his fear. And then Black Sun threw one last challenge at him. There was this enforcer, a white-skinned woman who pranced like a bird and felt in the Force like the cawings in the jungle. She looked at him from under marked eyelids and fought with the vibrosword, slide up slice down metal-glint.

And she thought he cared where he was from. She tried _dun moch _on him. "You've never faced my kind before."

He saw the feathers glued into hard plastic tubes over her shoulders, faking the natural plumage of birds from any world. He could not remember. There was something tickling at the back of his mind, but it refused to become familiar. Darth Sidious had told him about Nightsisters. He knew where they lived, how their traditional clothing looked, and that they were one of many splinter groups of Force users.

There was a knowingness in the Nightsister bodyguard's eyes, a confidence that lurked like vine traps in the jungle darkness. As Darth Maul worked to remember, as he worked to engage with the lightsaber-hum and vibroblade-buzz like a hyperdrive drawing its power from the engines, she slowed and lost her confidence. She knew something. He did not know that he knew it, but he did too—

And he said, "No, _you've _never faced my kind before," and, perfectly content not knowing what that kind _was_, he charged forward and killed her.


	2. Birth: Darth Maul

**2. Fifty-four years before the Battle of Yavin. **

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When Darth Maul was born, the Zabrak colony on Dathomir was not yet ruled by the Nightsisters. The hut was dusty and hot, and shepherded by one old medical droid. The baby lay still and fat on his mother's chest, both of them almost asleep, brown eyes fluttering. The crying was over, for now.

The father stood beside them with his arms folded, smiling. There was joy in him, joy at the sight of his family warm and at rest, and a strange feeling that he had _missed _something by not sharing their exhaustion. He felt hale and alert but for the nervousness that made the skin on his arms prickle. He had had one task, and that was to help with the naming.

The mother opened her eyes. She pulled the thick blanket over the baby up to his neck and tucked it in around his shoulders. The blanket was the same one they had used on the starship that brought them here, and the mother thought that it still smelled like metal and ozone. She stroked the baby's cheek. The skin was pale red with prominent veining. The horns were not yet grown.

There was a calm silence over the hut. The baby would not hear his own name for some time. He would begin to find himself without it.

The mother said, "His grandmother will be wondering about him. Whose eyes he has."

The father shuffled his weight between his feet. He said, "His uncle's, I think."

She patted the blankets around her child, and the father pulled his jacket tighter. The air was not unpleasantly warm. Scrubbers on the side of the house kept the humidity down. He had installed it with another refugee a week ago, and their talk then had been of Iridonia too. How bright the sun was shining, unlike the Dathomiri fog; what insects they would be batting away if they were home now. They didn't talk about when they could go back, and they didn't talk about the members of their families who hadn't come. Refugees made do. They joked about it too, casual mentions of their shared exodus.

She said, "Make me some tea, Markus?"

"Sure."

In the kitchen he drew water from a metal bucket and heated it in the processor salvaged from their ship. The kitchen was small enough that three steps took him across it to the screen door. He looked out at the six other prefab houses and the jungle beyond, dark and misty with the dew of the morning. A yellow-skinned Zabrak named Tesh hammered a tent spike into the ground next to his fenced-in herd of ruskakks. The tarp he was putting up lay beside him in a bright blue pile.

Another noise began to drum through the jungle; heavy footsteps that brought with them a rustling in the Force like anger and determination, alien and coming closer. Markus craned his neck to see out the window. The footsteps kept thumping, too regular to be falling trees. They were coming closer, too, impossible to ignore.

The Zabraks had seen settlements on their way onto this planet, cities of daub and trees and glowing watchfires. They had come to Dathomir because no one else did. They had heard there were witches.

"Glese," said Markus. "Can you move if we have to?"

A pause, and then "Yes," came from the other room. "Move how far? What's happening?"

"Someone's approaching. Not one of ours."

"Those settlements we saw on the way in?"

With a rustling of fabric, Glese appeared at the door with the baby in her arms, the top blanket wrapped around it and her shoulders over the sheath dress she had changed into after the birth. The red skin at her temples sparkled with sweat.

Outside, Tesh backed warily to their door, seeing the two Zabraks inside. He narrowed his dark eyes. "Do you sense something?"

"Yeah." Markus was the closest thing to a Force-user the little band had. Not strong enough to register on the Jedi potential tests, he still had flashes of premonition at times, some stronger than others. Now, he could swear this must be what the Jedi felt like. Something was _coming _through the jungle, as clear as if he could see it, except that it was _emotion_ he could see. Like an expression without a face, there was determination out there, and a quiet, irritated anger like a disapproving parent.

Closer, closer, closer, with Tesh retreating up the two stairs in front of the couple's house and Glese and the baby peering out the screen door, all eyes.

A rancor emerged from the trees, first a shadow of the shoulders and then the long arms swinging, and then three more decorated with feathers and long horns arcing over their back, protecting their riders-

Pale-skinned women in blood-red clothes. Purple glow appeared all around the Zabrak settlement as more women stalked out of the fog with bows in hand, eyes narrow and mouths set. Four, five, six, and then the rancors started tearing down houses.

An armed woman moved around the corner toward Tesh with her glowing bow pointed toward the dirt. "What do you-" He started, and she hit him across the face with the bone-white spar of the bow.

Markus slammed open the door. "Glese, _stay here_," and he went out. Two steps down and he pushed his hands out in front of him and without touching her the attacker flew back, hit the ground, rolled. A rancor waded through the remains of Tesh's house, ruskakks running into the jungle and hooting. Tesh crouched. Markus saw the rancor claws come down on him and tried to feel the Force again but he hadn't really _meant _that push to work, it had used _him _instead of the other way around, and it was done now.

The Nightsisters killed Glese, set Markus and Tesh to building the first Nightbrother hovel out of the remains of the remains of their spaceship, and raised Darth Maul for the few years before Sidious took him.


	3. Birth: Asajj Ventress

_Readers,_

_Belated welcome. This story is further described on my profile page, so check that out if you're interested. For now, I shall have you know that I'm experimenting on you. I'm not sure what the rhythm of this story should be. It was originally supposed to be novel-length, with each scene directly following another, but I thought it would be too dull to talk about Asajj and Savage's everyday lives before Clone Wars, since the entire point would be that those lives were rather boring. Short stories, though, don't give you time to know "my versions" of the characters as well as I'd like. So please bear with me while I figure this out, and any and all feedback is appreciated. _

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**Fifty-four years before the Battle of Yavin **

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Asajj was born in cacophony. The medical droid was whirring and beeping, saying _too skinny, too small, _and the Sisters dancing in their fumes.

They chanted, "E_de-blitz raga byn, erde-blitz-raga-byn, zum Asajj!" _

The baby was screaming, healthy and squirming with blue eyes and red mouth. Mother Talzin dipped one finger into a pot of black ink sitting on a wooden table, her nails smoothed for the occasion. She swiped a bar of black across the baby's white cheek while the mother marked the other side and Talzin said, "Welcome, Asajj. Welcome to the clan."

Asajj's mother Raland lay back on the long couch, waiting for the relief that had left her body limp to come to her mind as well. Mother Talzin knew that Raland Ventress's husband was pureblood Rattataki, the human far off in his genes nearly forgotten, pale and gaunt with his species marked in the size of his eyes (large, round) and his hands (thin, long bones). She had seen him once, when he had exited his ship. Raland knew he was alive somewhere, but he did not want this ritual. He didn't trust the Sisters.

_("They're witches.", he said as Talzin and her guards watched from the treetops, bowstrings of light buzzing in their ears but never drowning out the voice in her mind. "Unnatural. Evil. We thught so back on Rattatak. Why don't you think so now?"_

_"We can't go back to Rattatak.")_

There was empty space left for him on the other side of the couch where Raland lay, but no one stood there.

Talzin shook her head, the Force threatening to confuse the past with the present. She sat down beside the mother, and pet the baby's shoulder. At the foot of the bed, three witches preformed. Raland's memories were drowned out by the dancing, whirling figures of the ritual, by the chanting and the beeping of the droid. The doctor (she was, literally a witch doctor, but she was also a Rattataki who graduated from the University of Coruscant) shut off the droid.

"Rest," the doctor said. "You're both doing fine. We'll take vitals again after she's eaten."

Asajj sniffled and whined, and Raland passed a hand over her head, accidentally rubbing blotches of ink from her palm onto the baby's scalp. Asajj did not seem to mind. Instead, she quieted and blinked. The hut was dark and body-temperature, but the room was large enough for all of the women to stand and move separately as they wished.

A witch with feathers from her headdress trailing down along the dusty floor returned to the room from the next, holding a plastic slide of blood. Immediately, Raland looked up as if from a deathbed, and hugged the baby closer.

The witch nodded.

Mother Talzin had seen many different reactions to parents hearing that their child was Force-sensitive. Recently, the tests tended to come out in the positive more often. Volatile, animal anger filled the Force from out of Raland. The baby turned her head and bumped it against Talzin's thumb, eyes narrowing.

Talzin said, "Congratulations. Your daughter speaks the language of the universe."

The mother at first looked confused, and then her expression hardened. "She can use the Force."

"Yes." Talzin stood up and looked out into the dark, incense-filled room. She said, "Every birth is great, but those with the Force are greater. She will grow to lead the growing band of Nightbrothers. More refugees arrive every day, and those with the Force keep them in line."

(She did not say that Raland and her husband had been refugees too, so long ago, and that she had looked into their minds. She did not say that she did not know why Dathomir had become, suddenly, a nexus, drawing so many people to it that she did not know how it would sustain itself.)

Raland looked up at Talzin with wide blue eyes. "But we can't pay for training. We're refugees ourselves. How could she join your guard?"

"Of course she can." Talzin passed her claws over the dozing baby's face. "The Force brought the two of you to us. We will take care of you."

Raland smiled softly and drew her baby closer. Talzin heard the _maybe _in her thoughts. _Maybe we can stay. Maybe we can be safe. _

Talzin's talent was listening. Some sisters could move things at a distance with the Force; Talzin could move people. She could hear the conversations they had and wished to have and refrained from having. She had not met anyone else who heard the Force in the same way, and it had served her well.

Inside her head, Raland said, _Maybe. _


	4. Growth: Savage Oppress

_A/N: Well, I'm still not quite sure what I'm doing with this. It's sortof a dumping ground for Asajj-Savage-Maul stories. But my interest in TCW is starting to peak again and I figured I'd post a chapter I actually wrote back when the Nightsisters trilogy came out, to try to explain some stuff that bothered me. Mostly what bothered me was the names, and why the training ground where Savage and Asajj would have Darth Maul's face all over it. You might have seen this fic previously in a slightly different context on deviantArt. I apologize for any timeline errors. I'm slowly getting into the Star Wars fanfic community again...and missed you guys. _

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**Twenty-nine years before the Battle of Yavin.**

The sisters carried the name with them. It was one of the ways they kept the brothers from feeling enslaved.

Kijan elbowed his brother Rilka under the arm and pointed to the rim of the stadium. Six women—Zabrak, Dathomiri, or something in between—stood at even distances like sentries, weapons hung loosely at their sides, well within reach of their wax-pale, candle-taper fingers. They were guards, posted there to make sure none of the men escaped. The sun beat down on them all equally, warming bare, pale arms and tattooed skin.

The brothers glared at the Nightsisters balefully.

Glaring balefully at Nightsisters was one of their favorite pastimes. They had gotten rather good at it.

The spiritual mother of them all, Talzin of the blooded, fronded cloak, stood at the peak of the sandstone arena, tendrils of fabric weaving behind her like trees in a wind. She was here to give a speech, and she would give it, glares or no glares. "Two decades ago, a child was chosen from among you. He was trained in the ways of the dark side far from this place. The name he was given…was Darth Maul."

Kijan and Rilka gave nearly identical tired sighs. The Zabraki language just didn't work when translated into Paecian and then out of it into Basic. Everybody ended up with these melodramatic names like something in a holodrama. Kijan and Rilka only used their Basic names when they had to—namely, when the sisters were watching.

"Poor sap," Rilka whispered to his brother. "Somebody's mother who named their kid Khameir or Ciaràn or something is facepalming right now."

Kijan tried to figure it out quickly in his head. "Probably Ciaràn. Khamier would come out to more like…Audacity."

"Right." Rilka nodded. "That doesn't quite have the same ring."

"Shh." Behind them in line, their father cuffed Rilka across the back of the head.

Both brothers knew the unspoken command. Do not speak over the Mother. Draw attention to yourself, and you might be selected next. Talzin had been steadily intoning through Darth Maul's history while they spoke. She finished with one sentence.

"Today, we celebrate and mourn his fall in battle."

She never clarified. The name, though, brusque as it was, stuck.

It was a meaningless name, and a household one.

By the time the sisters' speech was done, the sun was hot and high. Kijan felt sweat actually congeal and drip its warm weight from the back of his neck to his ear. Even the guards with their bows taller than they were had started to look tired and hunched. The Nightbrothers were not allowed to do the same. Kijan felt his eyes drifting, and his father must have noticed something in the set of his shoulders because he felt another smack across his back. He growled and shook his head.

Rilka gave a concerned look at him. Kijan looked back up at the tiny, feathered form of the Mother.

Certainly their father was just concerned for them. The Dathomiri commanded that the Nightbrothers needed to look strong and prepared, not asleep. If you didn't look strong, you wouldn't be chosen. You wouldn't have value or the semblance of family that the Zabraks were allowed. He wasn't sure whether the Nightsisters knew that the Zabraks didn't exactly consider it an honor.

Sometimes Kijan looked at the guards high on the walls and wondered if his mother was among them.

When the ceremony was over, the clan filed back across the sand in somber order. It didn't remain somber for long, though—once outside the gate Rilka transformed back into a child, running along the packed dirt because he could and because the sun was out.

* * *

Two days later the brothers were exploring in the forest, running along the thick branches of nobby trees. Kijan went barefoot, his feet gripping the bark tightly as he ran. The other two boys ran and laughed in front of him, their lighter weight making the speed easier. Kijan's strength was in his muscle; Rilka's was in his eyes.

"There!" Rilka shouted. He and their friend Tarik skidded to a halt. Curious, Kijan plunged off the branch. His feet found a bed of spongy leaves and he tripped a few steps, straightening again to look at where he was going in the shade and the sound-dampening foliage.

He found himself face-to-face with a stone statue.

It could not quite at first be recognized as a Zabrak head. Maybe that was a line of horns curving over the top like the arm of a globe, but then the face should be here, near the middle, and it was not; slitted eyes glared out from an overhang near the bottom of the statue, while spiral and jagged line designs that could have been tattoos weaved all around the seemingly natural stone in the middle.

Tarik's feet slapped the leaves beside him, and Kijan looked over. Tarik, skinny and wearing a woven vest, circled the stone statue. Kijan rubbed his arms; it was cold here, as if the stone was pressing against him instead of simply standing in a humid jungle.

"So what is it?" Tarik asked.

Rilka dropped down from the branch last. Knowing him, he had been looking at a bird or a cloud in the distance. Of all of them, Rilka most wanted to travel to space. He was, though, just as interested in closer aerial phenomena.

He said, "I found it."

Kijan traced the spiral lines of tattoo, chiseled or laser-sculped by someone in the past. Maybe a not too distant past—moss grew on the statue only at its square base. As he looked down at it and followed its gaze past the moss, the face seemed to be twisting in its skull to look over its own shoulder and then down at the ground, glaring its convoluted way into the center of the planet. The effect was unnerving. "Who is it supposed to be?" Kijan said.

Rilka circled it, criss-crossing Tarik's circle in the opposite direction. "Maybe it's Darth Maul."

"I don't think so," Tarik said. "I heard he was born over the Catspine Mountains."

"Heard it from who?" Kijan said, skeptical.

"Just somebody."

"Do the Nightsisters live there too?" Rilka asked.

"I think so," Tarik replied. "According to Mother Talzin, they're everywhere."

It wasn't good to criticize the Nightsisters. Some said that they could speak to birds, or create them. These birds would carry voices away so the sisters could hear everything the brothers were saying…and if they said the wrong things, the sisters would come on speeders or rancors and take the brothers away.

This was how life was, for the brothers, in the cool of the jungle.

Kijan forgot about Darth Maul then. Occasionally, he thought about names. There was a joke he started with Rilka, who spread it around.

One day, Kijan and Rilka would find someone from another planet. They would tell this person how the Zabraks were kept by the Nightsisters. This person from another world could decide he had to end this plight, and would come down to Dathomir in his silver ship. He would say that he had been sent by the Oppress brothers, and ask where he could find their family.

And the Zabraks' spokesman would say, in Basic, "We are all oppressed brothers."

This was not traditional Zabrak humor. Or, at least, Kijan hoped it wasn't. He wasn't sure.

The Zabraks of Dathomir had lost much, and so names counted among their little property.


End file.
